Figure of speech
An idiom was a phrase that had figurative meaning often unrelated to the actual phrasing. Burning the midnight oil "Burning the midnight oil" was an Earth idiom meaning staying up late at night working or studying. In 2143, A.G. Robinson, who got to be the first Human to test the NX-Alpha test vehicle, told Jonathan Archer that he didn't get this assignment because he tried too hard, "burning the midnight oil" in the simulator eighteen to twenty hours a day. ( ) In 2376 Captain Kathryn Janeway, who was working very late one night in the mess hall, told Neelix that she was "just burning the midnight oil", to which Neelix replied that it was way past midnight. ( ) In an alternate timeline in 2364, Captain Jean-Luc Picard ordered Miles O'Brien to bypass the secondary plasma inducer, which required O'Brien to realign the entire power grid, stating "''we're all going to be burning the midnight oil on this one." Data, who overheard O'Brien, told him that that would be inadvisable because any "attempt to ignite a petroleum product on this ship at 0:00 hours would activate the fire suppression system."( ) Chicken and the Egg The '"Chicken and the Egg"' was a paradox, usually posed as the question, "''Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" In an alternate anti-time future created by Q, retired captain Jean-Luc Picard, used the question of the chicken the egg as a metaphor to explain the paradox of the anti-time anomaly to Geordi La Forge, Beverly Picard, Data and William Riker aboard the . ( ) In 2372, B'Elanna Torres described communicating with a duplicate of the by getting them to recalibrate their comm frequency carrier wave before they’d first made contact as "the chicken and the egg". ( ) In the 31st century, Jonathan Archer described Daniels’ urgent need to restore the original timeline by returning the captain to the 22nd century whilst lacking the facilities to do so as a chicken or the egg problem. ( ) }} Needle in a haystack "Needle in a haystack" was a Human idiom which described the long-lasting search for something in a large variety of possibilties. In 2267, when seeaching for th Galileo, James T. Kirk commnted that “Finding a needle in a haystack would be child's play”. In 2364, William T. Riker described searching Starfleet records for an instance of someone showering in their clothes as "like looking for a needle in a haystack". ( ) In 2369 while searching for the crash-landed runabout in the Gamma Quadrant, Miles O'Brien compared the search with searching a needle in a haystack. O'Brien and Jadzia Dax had to search several planets, two dozen moons, and an asteroid belt. ( ) In 2370, a Paradan replicant of O'Brien commented "Needle in a haystack wouldn't do this job justice" when searching for a fault in Deep Space 9's upper pylons. ( ) Stone knives and bearskins "Stone knives and bearskins" was a colorful term employed by Spock to describe the 1930s technology he was forced to use to construct a tricorder interface. Vital information was locked within Spock's tricorder: How had Leonard McCoy changed history? Spock was eventually able to construct an appropriate circuit, but retrieved two separate recordings: one in which Edith Keeler lived, and one in which she died. At that point, the improvised interface erupted in sparks and flame, ruining his chance to learn which of the recordings represented McCoy's alteration, and which the correct timeline. ( ) Kathryn Janeway also used this expression when typing on a late 20th century computer keyboard trying to find out information about Henry Starling. ( ) Category:Linguistics Category:Philosophy